Science and humanities meet together in Ernst Gombrich’s superb work, “Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation.”

Controversial in every detail, Gombrich attempts to link visual perception and art together through a scientific understanding of how art has influenced society over the centuries.

With a number of examples from Leonardo da Vinci to the Egyptian hieroglyphs, Gombrich tears apart artistic style and the techniques artists followed and built upon throughout history.

The theories and ideas he then shares are, quite simply, mind boggling.

Everything We Create Is Not Our Own

While it is easy to take vision for granted and look at it as a passive, automatic process, Gombrich proves this is not so.

“What we call ‘seeing’ is conditioned by habits and expectations.”

E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion

Let me transfer this idea to photography to clarify exactly what this means.

You’re at the park and pull out your dSLR. You came to the park for a reason – to find and capture great photographs. In this motive, however, is something much larger than you can imagine…

What do you define as “great photographs?”

If you’ve studied the art of photography for years, then you know the common things that make a good photograph…

Creatively correct exposure

Adequate depth of field

Subject in sharp focus

Interesting composition

Within each of these requirements, however, are expectations built from past experience seeing “correct” examples of these. What we know as good depth of field or focus is solely founded upon the past photographers that paved the way for us.

Consequently, when we pull our camera out at a park and look for a “great photo”, we’re really following a highly active process of duplicating what others have done before us.

Seeing As An Active Process

Gombrich defines seeing as an active process wholly determined by our past experiences. Our past, consequently, causes us to anticipate what we are looking for based on expectations and situations.

For photography, it is easier to imitate the way other photos of a certain subject look than to take good photo of subject from scratch.

Schemas, concepts, and motifs use these past memories of past work to help us capture the world around us. They dictate our aperture, shutter speed, focal length, and composition.

“The more we become aware of the enormous pull in man to repeat what he has learned, the greater will be our admiration for those exceptional beings who could break this spell and make a significant advance on which others could build.”

E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion

A Cohesive history and psychology of pictorial representation

Gombrich, through artwork of the ancient Greeks, Rembrandt, Impressionism, and more, gives a wide-ranging exploration of how we have seen the world and made art from our perception.

What’s more, each argument he makes is treated as a hypothesis to be tested and analyzed.

One particularly memorable passage was an experiment from Kohler involving chickens and gray sheets of paper. Through the example, you get a real eye-opener on light intensities and how our mind treats them.

Hone Your Photo Skills With the Help of a Brilliant Art Historian

Ernst Gombrich was one of the leading conventional art historian of his age and communicates his ideas clearly and powerfully.

“Art and Illusion” is a must-read if you are looking to sharpen your knowledge of past art technique and really understand that secret – magical – power that movies viewers.

“The artist cannot copy a sunlit lawn, but he can suggest it. Exactly how he does it in any particular instance is his secret, but the word of power which makes this magic possible is known to all artists – it is ‘relationships’.”